Older people can have the most complex of needs and addressing these needs can be hugely challenging. Whilst there is a strong evidence base demonstrating that older people benefit most when they have access to multidisciplinary teams working within integrated services, it is difficult to find anything happening inside older people’s healthcare that has not been influenced by nurses.

Older people’s care is a great place to build a nursing career and this can be in academia, clinical practice and commissioning. When we have joined up thinking between education, care delivery and commissioning we see commitment to bringing to life a competent workforce. Nursing older people draws upon core nursing skills of communication to assess, caring to be steadfast and focus on individuals – not individual problems – and it provides an opportunity for nurses to be courageous and develop new roles and approaches to care. A whole person approach to meeting our patients’ needs clearly demonstrates compassion in practice. Nursing older people is therefore the 6 Cs in action!